Podcasts of the Week: creeps, spooks and uplifting tales

Featuring Hunting Ghislaine, The Piper, High Strangeness, Tracks, and Days Like These

Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell in 1984: a ‘gripping’ story
Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell in 1984: a ‘gripping’ story
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Ghislaine Maxwell is a cracking subject for a podcast, said James Marriott in The Times. And in Hunting Ghislaine, John Sweeney (famous for “screaming at Scientologists” on Panorama) does it “more than” justice. In this “gripping and beautifully constructed” documentary, he has the confidence not to kick things off “overexcitedly” with Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, Maxwell’s arrest and the Prince Andrew interview. Instead, he starts the story at the beginning, carefully charting publisher Robert Maxwell’s “creepy and abusive obsession” with his daughter, and laying out startling tales of “old-school power and corruption” in 1980s Fleet Street. Sweeney’s “portentous foghorn” can jar at first, but it possesses a “brute moral clarity well suited to blasting through the lives of these cruel, wealthy and twisted people”. He has produced a superb podcast, a “must-listen”.

An uplifting new weekly podcast from Australian network ABC, Days Like These is partly modelled on the acclaimed US series This American Life, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. It was recorded during lockdown earlier this year, and the idea is to tell stories of “resilience, love and triumph at a time when hope can feel in short supply”. Standout episodes include Spencer’s Superpower, a tale of marriage and a pregnancy against the odds; Baby, a “touching story of the kindness of strangers” about a beloved doll that was mislaid in a shopping mall; and (best of all) Cate’s Black Summer Secret, about a family forced by bushfires to flee their Victoria home on New Year’s Eve. Each story lasts about 20 minutes: “just enough time to put on some headphones, block out the news and marvel at the human capacity for love and survival”.

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